Vegetables In Halloween Costumes, dress-up mirth for crawlers

Jared Chapman potty trained my children. It’s not that author/illustrator, Jared Chapman has a side hustle wandering the country training toddlers about the virtues of going to the bathroom in the toilet. Among other books, he’s the author of Vegetables In Underwear. Vegetables In Halloween Costumes takes that theme, focuses on the carrot, and lets crawlers through pre-k kids loose with the laughs.

Vegetables In Halloween Costumes is a board book. Personally, our house is long past the age where board books are used by small readers. However, we still get excited when a really clever board book is released. They’re fun to look at and you can imagine all those young minds processing the bright colors and thumbing through the thick pages. Side note: ‘board’ is also top of our mind given the re-emergence of the Norm McDonald, Courtney Thorne-Smith interview on Conan from 1997.

Halloween Costumes has carrot as its narrator. Carrot is very happy and introducing kids to a variety of costumes. Pay attention because the next couple of vegetables are in costume and may not be easily identified. The purple eggplant is dressed like a clown. The big ear of corn is dressed like a magician while the smaller ear of corn has bunny ears and is wearing a diaper while popping out of a top hat. There are a series of peas dressed incognito as a Chinese Dragon.

On each page, you’ll see a couple of words that eventually form a sentence. This is also punctuated with a happy vegetable in some manner of outlandish costume. Similar to its publishing sister, Vegetables in Holiday Underwear, the book is so cute that it’s almost impossible to dislike. It’s not as impactful as the first one in the series, but that’s also because our kids are older.

If you have a crawler the Vegetables in Halloween Costumes is a great place to start out. That age will love the silliness and immediately grin and laugh about as the different foods get in costume.

As with most board books, whoever is presenting the book casts the initial impression. Chapman’s books have an energy and sense of fun that are easy for older readers to translate to those crawlers. You don’t need wacky voices or multiple characters to sell this book to kids. The art, durable construction, and imagination-based vegetable role play will take care of the heavy lifting; all you have to do is present the book with enthusiasm, wonder, and curiosity.    

Vegetables in Halloween Costumes is by Jared Chapman and available on Abrams Appleseed, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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